Father's day He’s standing in the doorway, my father, baggy pants and slim. His white shirt rolled to his elbows; forearms like girders. Compact, springy, his eyes flicker like butterfly wings. His slicked black hair making him sleek all over.
I’m inside the door frame opposite from him. I’m standing beside my wispy mother. Unease coats the space between them, then twists and turns around the contours of the house.
My father smiles at me, his presence a magnet, and I want to go to the places he inhabits. But behind us, in the depths of the dim foyer, like a phantom, my grandfather lurks in silent judgment: “A man with no education.”
But it’s the second Sunday of April, and today I shall be under my father’s powerful wings and my legs are springs prepared to jump into his world, but I wait for the unspoken negotiation between the parties, my body caught in a hurricane’s eye.
I regard my mother’s face, then turn timidly to grandfather whose penetrating eyes show realms of doubt. I hide my enthusiasm, for fear my thoughts will betray me though I’m all set to shift from the dull monotony of this house to the reverie of the road that leads to my father’s seaside home.
I feel the secret tension ease. My mother says her tentative good-byes, but with a discomforting stare in her eye that puts a sty in mine. Grandfather approaches, stops and coyly hides his frown, and my father’s fights to keep his vitality live. But when the old man shakes the younger one’s hand, father regains his composure like a boxer recuperating from a hook.
I’m thinking--come on come on come on come on let’s go all ready. I hear a dim “goodbye” from nowhere, I edge to the door, and cross the border to stand beside my father and toward the anticipation of what will be. Released, I wave, turn, and dash out. My father nods, then scampers behind me. It’s now a race to the car.
“Nice day,” he says as though he means that but means much more in that gleam in his roving eye as though every day